Judge Oglesby Defines Way to Attain Law Enforcement
Winston-Salem Journal
“Forsyth County and North Carolina has the kind of government and law enforcement that the people want,” declared Judge J. M. Oglesby in opening his charge this morning to the grand jury drawn to serve during the two weeks’ regular term of criminal court, which convened this morning. Judge Oglesby then followed with a graphic description of the enforcement of laws in North Carolina, particularly pointing out the manner in which laws are enforced and strongly placing emphasis on the diligent inquiry into matters by the grand jury, which he caid, can do more than anything else to make this a thoroughly clean state.
Judge Oglesby stated that there was only a few criminals in each township, ward or precinct. If the righteous citizens exercise their power, he said, they will do away with the thieves and those in the community who are breaking the laws, and they won’t be long in doing it. His honor pointed out to the grand jury that they should know who the law violators are, or if they don’t they can find out by diligent inquiry. The grand juries of North Carolina can dispel all this lawlessness if they will go about it in the proper exercise of duty, he said, and one grand juror can do it alone by the proper interest and procedure.
Prohibition enforcement came in for a part of Judge Oglesby’s charge. He stated that it is not a question as to whether any member of the grand jury, or citizen, for that matter, is for or against the prohibition enforcement. It is a law, and it is the duty of every good citizen to enforce the law.
In enforcement of the law, Judge Oglesby told the grand jury to start at the source of evil. “We have wasted too much time with the one-pint fellow,” he said. Of course, he pointed out, he should be stopped, but it is the big rum runner and bootlegger that should be stopped first.
Judge Oglesby stated that some so-called respectable citizens are making liquor, selling it or transporting it. A market must be had for whiskey, he said, and if the higher class people didn’t use the fluid then the lower class wouldn’t make it.
“There is too much rum-running going on,” he said, “within the knowledge of the public. Just because a man is a power politically or financially is no reason that he should be left alone. Get him,” he said.
Rum-runners and bootleggers generally are known, Judge Oglesby said, and if the sheriffs, the judges, and the grand juries will do their duties, then they will rid North Carolina of this evil.
Judge Oglesby scored the various classes of people who attended conventions of various places and there purchase whiskey and drink it. As long as this kind of thing continues, he said, the prohibition law will never be enforced. “It is not right for men who stand high in the public mind to drink whiskey and then for the officers to go out here and arrest ht eone-pint fellow, leaving the others alone.”
“Gentlemen,” Judge Oglesby said, “you will never break up the liquor traffic as long as you start at the bottom and go up. Start at the top and go down. You can do it. Start today.”
General Enforcement
Judge Oglesby, at the beginning of his charge, spoke of the progress made by North Carolina. He spoke of the many tourists that were coming into Western North Carolina, of the great pleasure resort trade there. He spoke of the manner in which Piedmont North Carolina had taken its place as a leader in the industrial world and how the eastern acres of the State are regarded as the land of “milk and honey.” He spoke of the educational facilities and good roads and industries, everything that has gone to make North Carolina so progressive in these things today.
“But North Carolina with all her progress,” he said, “has had a total of 1,131 murders since the beginning of 1922.” He pointed out that in 1922 North Carolina has 256 murders, in 1923 a total of 261, in 1924 a total of 299, in 1925 a total of 235, and for the first five months of this year, a total of 80.
This is a challenge to the citizenship of North Carolina, he said. It is a challenge to the educators, to the spiritual forces and every other agency in the State. Back of all these murders, he said, is the lack of respect for constituted authority. The chances are, he said, that this lawlessness comes from way back in the home, where the father or someone has had an influence on the growing child because they have violated the law in different respects.
There are only two classes of citizens in North Carolina today, Judge Oglesby said. Those two forces are the righteous and the unrighteous. The righteous are God-fearing and spiritual-loving people who live upright Christian lives, and the unrighteous are the lawless element.
The only way to erase this murder blog, Judge Oglesby said, and other lawlessness for that matter, is to create a respect fr the law. This respect can be created, he said, by the proper enforcement of it. There is no class of men in America today that can do more for the enforcement and creating a respect for law than the lawyers, he said. The jurist and the juries can do their part and the citizens can do theirs.
“What does it profit North Carolina to gain the whole world industrially and in other ways, if she loses her soul in lawlessness?” Judge Oglesby asked the jury.
Judge Oglesby spoke of the liquor violator on the roads of the State, the rum-runners as well as those who drink the whiskey and drive their cars while they are drunk. He pointed out the vast sum of money spent by North Carolina on the good roads program, and stated that these roads should be made safe for the taxpayers and the loyal citizen. If the citizen doesn’t make them safe, he said, then the bootleggers and the rum-runners and drunkards will take them.
In speaking of gambling, Judge Oglesby pointed out the type of gambling at the race tracks as an instance. He pointed out that the boy or girl might be reared right in the home, sent to college and on through life to the place where they are ready to enter life’s battlefield. Then they take to gambling. Within three weeks, Judge Oglesby said, they will have lost all their moral training and within a short time they will be moral wrecks.
Judge Oglesby spoke of the menace of immorality. He told of how a boy or girl could go to Sunday School and receive the proper training there and also in the home and then begin to frequent immoral places and in a short time all moral respect had vanished and all spiritual teachings would be shot to pieces.
Concealed Weapons
In speaking of concealed weapons, Judge Oglesby asked why a man should carry a concealed weapon in Forsyth County or in North Carolina. In North Carolina and Forsyth County God has blessed the people and the citizenship. Then why should the people go around armed like Mexican bandits?
Do away with the pistol toter and there will be a decline in the murders, he said. Perhaps you have noticed, he said, that in the majority of the instances when a man pleads self-defense on a murder charge or some other serious assault charge, that man had a pistol with him when the murder or assault took place. It is a strange coincidence, Judge Oglesby said.
In speaking of the juror’s duties toward inspecting the various county institutions, Judge Oglesby pointed out particularly the conditions at the convict camps. The time has passed in North Carolina, he said, where prisoners are to be cruelly treated. Such a thing is a relic of barbarism. “I would not send any prisoner to a convict camp where he would be whipped or beaten in any manner,” Judge Oglesby declared.
If a convict guard or superintendent can’t get work out of a prisoner without assaulting him and beating him, he said, then that man is unfit to have the job because he can’t handle men.
In closing his talk Judge Oglesby told of a conversation that Roger W. Babson, the great statistician, had with a South American governmental official. This official asked Mr. Babson how the people of North America with limited natural resources could be so happy and contented and live in such a happy manner, with money to spend, etc., while the people of South America had all kinds of natural resources and other things that would naturally tend to make them happy and contented, when as a fact they were not so.
Mr. Babson is quoted as having said, or words to the effect: “When our forefathers came to to America to live they came seeking God. When the people of South America came to that country, they came seeking gold.”
From page 3 of the Concord Daily Tribune, Thursday, July 29, 1926
newspapers.digitalnc.org/lccn/sn92073201/1926-07-29/ed-1/seq-3/